The latest cryptocurrency rout is about more than South Korea

After a South Korean Justice Minister said on Thursday that the country is preparing a bill to ban bitcoin trading, every major cryptocurrency plummeted.

“There are great concerns regarding virtual currencies and the justice ministry is basically preparing a bill to ban cryptocurrency trading through exchanges,” Justice minister Park Sang-ki said at a press conference, according to Reuters.

But by the end of the day on Thursday, South Korea had appeared to pull back its stance: President Moon Jae-in said that Park Sang-ki’s claim is, “not a finalized decision and will be finalized through discussion and a coordination process with each government ministry.”

Coins rallied in response.

There’s more to this story: South Korea is just the latest country to indicate that it wants to take a strong stance, either positive or negative, toward trading of cryptocurrencies.

What we are seeing, then, is that as the bitcoin and overall cryptocurrency market matures and heats up, countries with hot activity are eager to set official policy. In other words: regulation is coming.

In the case of South Korea, Thursday’s news had an instant impact and caused a rout. By Thursday night, all of the major coins were already back in the green thanks to Moon Jae-in’s comments cautioning that the South Korea ban is not yet final.

It was a reminder of the resilience of this market—even when there’s bad news, the top coins typically regain their losses within a day or two.

Stay tuned as more countries begin to publicly tease out their regulatory stance toward cryptocurrencies.

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Daniel Roberts covers bitcoin and blockchain at Yahoo Finance. Follow him on Twitter at @readDanwrite.